Balsamic Cocktail Sauce

This cocktail sauce recipe will blow you away! This recipe will show you how to make cocktail sauce in only 5 minutes, how could you make it easier!

Balsamic Cocktail Sauce is a new twist on an old favorite. Perfect for serving with shrimp cocktail or steamed shrimp.

A few years back some friends and I had the bright idea of making new twist on an old favorite, steamed shrimp. In Baltimore, where we live, nearly all steamed shrimp is smothered with Old Bay.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the stuff, but sometimes you are craving something different, which was when we had the idea for Balsamic Steamed Shrimp. Naturally, it needed a corresponding sauce: Balsamic Cocktail Sauce.

We brainstormed flavor profiles and ultimately decided that the sweet and zesty flavor of balsamic vinegar would be a good idea. We stopped at the grocery store on our way home from bowling and grabbed the supplies, went home and steamed us up a pot.

The problem was that traditional cocktail sauce with horseradish was a little too overpowering, so we decided to make up a new homemade cocktail sauce using balsamic vinegar and cayenne for the bite. Needless to say this delicious combination became our new favorite shrimp sauce.

Everyone loves a good cocktail sauce, but where did they start? They started in the United States in the 19th century. In the states they are made up of ketchup or chili sauce mixed with horseradish. Lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco sauce are usually thrown into the mix as well.

In parts of Europe it is commonly made up of mayonnaise and tomato sauce making it the same color as the shrimp!

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Meleah H wrote:

Can’t wait to try this tonight! I’ve been looking for a recipe that doesn’t call for horse radish, because it’s something I never keep on hand. I have some Heinz brand Caramelized Onion and Bacon ketchup that I need to use up. Will that work in place of regular ketchup? Thanks!